Sweet Home (스위트홈; Seuwiteuhom) is a 2020 South Korean series starring Song Kang, Lee Jin-wook, and Lee Si-young. It's based on the webcomic of the same name. It aired on Netflix in December 2020.
An apocalyptic event strikes, turning people into monsters. A group of people who live in the same apartment building struggle to stay alive while monsters roam outside — and inside.
A second season aired on December 1st, 2023.
Contains examples of:
- Adaptational Alternate Ending: In the webcomic, the remaining survivors make it to the mountain safely after Hyun-su and Eun-hyuk sacrificed themselves in the process of defeating the Big Bad and they eventually find themselves in a military encampment. In the series, the remaining survivors encounter the military right after emerging to a snowy cityscape after hours of walking through an Underground Tunnel Network. They're escorted off to a van except for Yi-kyung, who parts ways to find answers about her fiancé on her own after the military refuses to co-operate with her due to the survivors' actions. Meanwhile, Hyun-su wakes up to find himself being driven by a possessed Sang-wook to somewhere. Cue Fade to White.
- Adaptation Deviation: The series' second season strays away from the webcomic's plot completely.
- Adaptation Expansion: The military's role is more pronounced and questionable compared to the webtoon, where they're mentioned in passing.
- Air-Vent Passageway: Yi-kyung crawls through the building's air-vents as she flees the spider monster.
- Anyone Can Die: By the end of the first season, at least nine of the Green Home survivors are dead and at least a couple more are in a state of Uncertain Doom.
- Armies Are Evil: With a very few exceptions, the Korean army is shown being tyrannical and ruthless as a whole. Most of the soldiers have no problem abusing their power and beating up innocent people at the slightest provocation, make inhuman experiments on the infected who can control the curse/virus to create an vaccine, and even that vaccine is reserved only for the army and the civilians who helped them. They also kill far more humans than most of monsters. When a female monster tries to shoo away the people from her nest, she kills zero humans, whereas the soldiers shot aimlessly, drive over the people, throw even grenades at them and burn people alive to get at the monster, all actions resulting in dozens of deaths.
- Autobots, Rock Out!: "Warriors" by Imagine Dragons plays whenever the survivors are doing something particularly dangerous or awesome.
- Batter Up!: Ji-su carries a baseball bat to defend herself.
- Black Eyes of Evil: Infected people's eyes turn black when they come close to becoming monsters.
- Blessed with Suck: For a measure of just how "blessed" anyone who suffers monsterization can be. While most monsters are scary and dangerous, with even the weird ones managing some level of threat or interesting creature design, the grocery store owner turns into a human-sized copy of Cousin Itt. Probably a reflection on his vanity and desire to have a full head of hair.
- Bludgeoned to Death: Sang-wook kills Yun-jae with a hammer; the same hammer Yun-jae tried to kill him with.
- Body Snatcher: Ui-myeong, verging on Grand Theft Me save for the condition that the host body must be of a deceased person.
- Canon Foreigner: Several characters don't originate from the webtoon, the most prominent one being firewoman Seo Yi-kyung.
- Car Fu: Yi-kyung fights the Beefcake with a fire engine.
- Clean Cut: Jae-heon slices off half a monster's head with ease. Especially notable because his sword is a keepsake, therefore he probably doesn't sharpen it regularly.
- The Social Darwinist: Ui-myeong, in part due to the horrible experiments he faced at the hands of the army.
- Deadly Nosebleed: Played with. Blood pours from people's noses when they're about to turn into monsters. Technically the nosebleed isn't deadly to them, but it means everyone around them is in danger.
- Death by Adaptation: Sang-wook, Yu-ri and Byeong-il do not survive to face the military unlike in the webtoon.
- Detect Evil: Much like in Silent Hill, monsters create radio interference that can be heard if you dial out with a cell phone and listen by plugging in headphones.
- Duct Tape for Everything: Sang-wook uses duct tape to restrain Yun-jae and bandage a wound.
- Dutch Angle: Used liberally throughout the series.
- Enemy Rising Behind: One of the monsters rises behind Ji-su. Jae-heon spots it just before it attacks.
- Enemy Within: With a touch of Superpowered Evil Side. Victims of monsterization and special infected are "seduced" by a voice or copy of themselves with Black Eyes of Evil with giving them what they most desire. If they give in, they go full monster. If they can hold out for 15 days, they become special infected and no longer run the risk of uncontrolled monsterization. Though admittedly there does seem to be a risk of losing control for spells at a time. The entity at least claims not to know what it is, and it's something that seems to affect them all.
- Every Car Is a Pinto: Downplayed. A damaged car does explode, but only because a fuel leak caught fire.
- Evil-Detecting Dog: Bom the Pomeranian is usually reliable for noticing danger.
- Fire-Breathing Weapon: Gil-seop uses a flamethrower to fend off the monsters in the garage.
- Groin Attack: Ji-su distracts a monster by hitting it between the leg. With a baseball bat, no less.
- Healing Factor: The monsters are nigh-unkillable, and will eventually recover from just about anything, including having their head cut off. Kill It with Fire when downed being the only reliable way to kill them, or in the case of monsterized or pre-monsterized humans, killing them while still in human form.
- Heroic Sacrifice:
- Jae-heon forces one of the monsters into the lift, then insists someone throws a Molotov Cocktail at both of them.
- Du-sik performs one by giving a One-Winged Angel Hyun-su a Cooldown Hug.
- Horror Hunger: In the first episode, Hyun-su hears his neighbor complaining she's hungry. When he opens the door, he finds she's eaten his ramen... and her cat. Then she turns up at his door, begging to be let in while still saying she's hungry.
- How We Got Here: The first episode starts with Hyun-su walking out of the building and the soldiers shooting him. The rest of the series shows the events leading up to this.
- Impaled with Extreme Prejudice:
- Jin-ok's daughter and Su-ung, who came to her rescue, both get impaled by a monster's tongue.
- The Beefcake falls onto a sharp piece of metal and gets stabbed through the chest. That doesn't kill it, so Yi-kyung pushes burning wood on top of it.
- Hyun-su's monster form has spikes on his wings. He uses them to impale Ui-myeong. Du-sik gets impaled on them too.
- Important Haircut: Hyun-su, once he learns to move on from his past trauma. Followed by a montage as a rewinding of a tear being un-shed and a razor being sheathed.
- Improvised Weapon: Most of the survivors wield one, but most notably Eun-hyeok fights off a monster with a fire extinguisher.
- Karmic Transformation: Inverted. Instead of turning into something they hate, it's heavily implied by the Enemy Within and some pre-monster characterization that the transformations follow the greatest desire of the person affected. Though all the same the result is a curse since it turns the victim into a monster.
- Kill It with Fire: The only way to kill the monsters permanently is to burn them.
- Multipurpose Tongue: One prominent monster from early on in Season 1 has a long tentacle-like tongue. It uses it as a weapon and to drain its victim's blood.
- Non-Malicious Monster: Some of the monsters, including Myeong-ja and the slime monster, don't go out of their way to harm people. They may even help them; the slime monster protects Yeong-su when the criminals nearly find him.
- Ominous Korean Chanting: The soundtrack includes a very ominous-sounding choir when things look especially dark for the characters.
- One-Winged Angel: Hyun-su provides a rare heroic example when he turns into a monster and attacks Ui-myeong. Bonus points for his monster form being literally one-winged.
- Outliving One's Offspring:
- Myeong-ja's baby died in a traffic accident.
- Jin-ok watches her daughter die after days of her being missing.
- Perpetual-Motion Monster: In the first episode, monsters that have been on the rampage for months and frozen in the snow wake up as Hyun-su walks out of the building. Aside from Horror Hunger forcing some to feed compulsively, others don't seem to need any food at all.
- Pro-Human Transhuman: Hyun-su, despite being mistrusted and mistreated, decides to help his fellow survivors. It pays off as they make Heel Realizations and accept him over time.
- Red Shirts: Several unnamed survivors die in the hands of the outlaws.
- Secret Underground Passage: The survivors inadvertently discover one near the makeshift gravesite that they use to escape the building as it's under siege by the military, who believe the survivors are armed and dangerous.
- Sequel Hook: The ending of the first season ends on a big cliffhanger and leaves a lot of unanswered questions. For starters, what exactly happened to Yi-kyung's fiancé? And where are the survivors and Hyun-su going?
- Spared by the Adaptation: Characters with notable deaths in the webtoon like Jae-hwan and Hye-in make it to the end instead.
- Spiders Are Scary: One of the monsters is a giant spider with a human head. It chases Yi-kyung through the air-vents, and later attacks Du-sik and Su-yeong.
- The Stoic: Of all the survivors Eun-hyeok is the only one who consistently stays calm. His coldness makes him unpopular with the others even as he tries to keep them alive.
- The Masquerade: Special Infected, or humans who have resisted full monsterization but can enter it as a Super Mode. Once past the initial phase showing symptoms, they are undetectable without intense examination. The army's plan to offer rewards for people who turn them in is deduced to be a ploy to weed them out, and the rewards a lie given anyone can be monsterized at any time, and gather test subjects for a potential cure or vaccine. Ui-myeong in fact infiltrates a gang of criminals with no one the wiser, even without taking into account the fact he can Body Swap.
- Title Drop: In episode 7, Ji-soo plays her guitar and sings a song for Hyun-su, and he tells her it makes him feel like home. Ji-soo decides that "home, sweet home" is the perfect title for her song.
- Total Eclipse of the Plot: A total solar eclipse suddenly happens towards the end of the series in which Hyun-su suddenly gains a One-Winged Angel form from his monsterization.
- Tragic Monster:
- Myeong-ja reveals she's infected after The Beefcake nearly kills her. As if her backstory isn't sad enough, the first thing she does just twists the knife: she asks Ji-su, who's ready to kill her if she fully becomes a monster, about the children she almost died trying to protect.
- Another tragic example is the lizard like monster from season 2. The monster is a mother with a baby who tries to scare away the people from her nest, but never harms anyone. She does take a lost girl captive for a few minutes, but it is revealed she just tried to make sure she is reunited with her own mother. She is strongly contrasted with the army, who harm and kill countless people trying to capture the monster. They shoot aimlessly, killing a lot of people, drive over them, and throw a grenade in a truck trying to kill the monster, without caring that there are humans inside, and end up burning several others alive.
- Transhuman Treachery: Ui-myeong, a Puppeteer Parasite monster that appears later in the series, fully subscribes to this worldview, regarding regular humans as weak at best and dangerous to the survival of the monsters at worst. He even almost convinces Hyun-su to abandon his Pro-Human Transhuman ways.
- Vampiric Draining: One of the monsters has a very long prehensile tongue which it uses to drain people's blood.
- Was Once a Man: All of the monsters used to be human.
- Weather Dissonance: For unknown reasons, the temperature quickly dwindles to the point that it snows in September.
- Worst Aid: A self-inflicted version; Sang-wook "bandages" a wound with duct tape. In real life, this is a terrible idea. Setting aside the fact the tape is covered with god alone knows how many germs, removing it would just tear the wound open again.
- Zombie Infectee: Averted for most of the infected in the series. Their symptoms are either spotted too quickly to try and conceal it, they quickly remove themselves from the group (taking on a Non-Malicious Monster form or dying), or they outright reveal themselves to be affected for quarantining.
